It’s All in How You Say It, Not What You Say

Clarity is all important to a writer. You must make sure that what you say is clear to your readers because, even in this age of technology, they can’t always contact you easily and ask a question about what you wrote.

All writers come out of the educational system which emphasized that more complex words showed a higher level of intelligence. After all, as a professional writer, shouldn’t your vocabulary be better than that of your readers? The answer is an emphatic no.

It’s not about how many words you know but how many common words you can use to express yourself.  Complex or $25 words—they used to be $20 but inflation has caught up to them—are words beyond the average reader’s vocabulary for which they can’t get the meaning from the context. So the first rule of clarity is to stay away from #25 words. But there’s another side to clarity.

Readers are constantly bombarded with  deceiving wording in the weekly supermarket brochures where they purchase their groceries. Sometimes, it’s the fine print—they must buy four of something selling for 4 for $10 to get the discounted price. Another ploy is that an item is only for sale at that price on a particular day of the week. But the latest has been the lack of clarity in the ads in the weekly circular. Often shoppers don’t know what to expect until they get to checkout and end up paying a higher price because they didn’t understand the ad in the first place.

Dunkin Donuts recently offered their customers on their rewards program, “Dunkin Perks,” 50 bonus points if they spent $4 using their Dunkin Donuts debit card. What they failed to mention was that customers had to spend $4 before taxes. Now that seems like a simple omission, but many customers probably got caught spending only $3.99, plus tax which brought them over $4. While they thought they would get the extra points, the company denied them their bonus points for one penny. Here, clarity was the key. And unhappy customers equals bad press more so today than previously.

Sure, what you say is important, but how you say it to your readers is just as important, if not more so. Don’t expect your readers to make a leap. What you perceive as clear to you may not be to them. This could be a leap in time, a leap in place, or a leap in understanding. How many times have you said something to someone, who is obviously hurt by your comment, only to quickly add, “I didn’t mean that.” If you didn’t mean what you said, then you should have said it another way. The same applies to writing. But it’s even more critical here because you can’t say, “I didn’t mean that” to a reader you don’t know and can’t see.

Too Good to Be True

“Make a great living while working from home (or from a coffee shop, or poolside, or while you travel) ...YOU decide what you write about and for whom.” Sounds almost too good to be true. In fact, that’s just what it is.

The above blurb, promoting a free webinar and report, recently appeared in a Writer’s Digest Update Email. Look at the phrases used—great living, working from home, coffee shop, poolside, while you travel—all things you’d love to do. And that’s the catch. Each of these phrases causes unsuspecting writer wannabees to start day dreaming about a life they’d love to have, away from the drudgery of the cubicle they inhabit every day.

There are lots of seminars and come-ons out there, enticing beginners. Each plays on the dreams of people like you. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not bad to dream. But as far as writing is concerned, it pays to add a touch of practicality to your dreams.

Let’s look at each of these phrases.

Make a great living. Yes, you can make a living as a writer—I’ve been doing it for 29 years. But only a handful of lucky writers makes a “great” living. In fact, as I’ve said so many times in this blog, writing is hard work and generally the pay is often in the moderate range. Unless a writer produces a blockbuster bestseller, about the only way to make big bucks is to do corporate writing. And that puts you right back in the cubicle, even if only virtually.

Working from home. In today’s technologically inspired marketplace, you can do a lot of things from home. Computers make that possible. So why writing? You may be passionate about writing. Or perhaps friends have told you that you write well. Or you may look at writing as a way to get people to notice you.

From a coffee shop. Everyone imagines themselves sitting in a Starbucks writing the next great American novel. Have you been to a Starbucks recently? Chances are you won’t find a seat. That’s because so many people use it as their mobile office. It seems everyone in the place has a laptop open to the Internet or is working on a document or spreadsheet. However, if you ignore the caché of Starbucks and try Dunkin Donuts, for example, you’ll usually have the place to yourself.  Isn’t what you’re doing more important than where you’re doing it?

Poolside. The same applies to sitting poolside and working on your laptop. This isn’t the safest place to work, unless you just happen to have your own pool. If that’s the case, you probably don’t need to make a living as a writer in the first place. But if you try this at a public pool or swim club, chances are the kiddies will splash that shiny new laptop of yours and ruin whatever you are working on.

While you travel. Everyone—and I mean nearly everyone—dreams of traveling the world and writing about it. It seems like the ideal glamorous life. However, they see it from a vacation perspective, not a working perspective. Most likely the only travel they’ve done has been on vacation, where time isn’t important and they can do pretty much what they want. But working while traveling is something else. You’ll be constantly living out of a suitcase. Unless you’re independently wealthy, you’ll have to beg someone else to pay for your trip—and travel isn’t cheap these days. And finally, depending on your schedule and the work you need to accomplish, you may not even have time to enjoy the places you visit. And forget about a family life. You won’t have time for it.

So before you get suckered into free webinars or costly seminars that promise to show you the way to writing riches, think carefully the practical side of being a full-time writer.

An Old-Fashioned Christmas in the Burbs

Every year the holiday season seems to get longer and more glitter-filled. People rush around buying trees, presents, food, and decorations. All to satisfy their need to bask in the glow of an old-fashioned Christmas—a concept created by greeting card companies and retailers to get people to buy, you guessed it, more stuff.

What exactly is an old-fashioned Christmas? The pundits say that you should savor the traditions that have helped countless generations celebrate the season of Jesus' birth. If that were so, it would be more prudent to break out the shamrocks since it has been proven that Jesus was actually born in March.

And there’s certainly no lack of cultural traditions that you can follow, depending, of course, on your family’s heritage. While many people decorate Christmas trees, it was actually the Germans who started that practice. Consider the image of families trudging through knee-deep snow to swing axes and claim the trees that will grace their parlors. Today, families are more likely to ride over to a nearby tree farm in the warm comfort of their SUVs while their children sit in the back seats texting their friends on their cell phones. Once there, they pile out and climb aboard a hay wagon to be pulled passed rows of carefully manicured fur trees that look more artificial than the artificial ones. And after they’ve picked their trees, everyone can sit by a fire and drink hot chocolate. Now all that someone has to do is put this scene to music—oh, that’s right, someone has.

And what of the carolers singing their way through quiet streets, and grateful residents offering steaming mugs of cocoa?  You can thank the Brits for that practice. While people still carol, they’re more likely to bring their own hot chocolate from the nearest Dunkin Donuts.

And, of course, all the grandparents out there delight in the children—little ones stringing popcorn. Actually, they eat most of it and throw the rest at each other. And what of their small, hopeful faces pressed against windows? Just what do they see out there in their development?

And who can forget the candlelight tours of historic homes. Don’t they just make you feel warm and cozy. They’re great to look at but would you really want to live there? Outside, imagine horse-drawn sleighs gliding down snow-packed streets. When was the last time you saw a horse-drawn sleigh in your neighborhood?

Think of the deer in the evening shadows, eating up all of your prized azaleas. And what about those yule logs popping in hundreds of fireplaces. Chances are the fireplaces are gas, and the only yule log you’ll see is the one burning on T.V. with carols playing in the background. You might consider building a fake brick fireplace, then putting your flat-screen T.V. in the opening and hanging those special stockings made just for filling above it on the mantel. All you need now is the smell of pine and a wood-burning fire. Oh, that’s right, you forgot to plug in the holiday air freshener.

And don’t forget the Christmas feast. No figgy pudding for you. This year you’re serving a turkey with all the fixin’s that you picked up at your supermarket, along with a “freshly baked” pumpkin pie that you have warming in the oven.

What holiday would be complete without St. Nick? Well, Easter for one and Fourth of July for another. But again thanks to the Brits and the Dutch, you have the jolly old elf to keep your pre-schoolers enthralled. For the rest of us, he might as well be the guy with the white beard selling cars in the T.V. commercial.

But what an old-fashioned Christmas really means is sharing—little gifts in bright wrappings, a pie baked for the needy, an extra dollar in the Salvation Army kettle, neighbors invited over for cider and eggnog and store-bought cookies.

Slip out on Christmas Eve to shuffle along your neighborhood streets. Treat your eyes to the sight of a thousand lights strung around windows, trees and doors. Try to imagine what it would be like to smell the ginger cookies baking and the turkey roasting, if people actually did that any more. Feel the gentle touch of snowflakes gliding down. Wish whoever you meet a “Merry Christmas,” knowing that you’ve just spread a little Christmas cheer of your own.

Here's wishing you and yours a holiday filled with love and happiness.